Free E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 by The Amateur Cracksman

old Lady Melrose's necklace? I've been wanting it for years!
But I'm not going to play the fool; honor bright, I'm not; yet
—by Jove!—to get to windward of the professors and Mackenzie
too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!"
    "Well, you mustn't play it this week."
    "No, no, I won't. But I wonder how the professors think of going
to work? That's what one wants to know. I wonder if they've
really got an accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew their
game! But it's all right, Bunny; don't you be jealous; it shall
be as you wish."
    And with that assurance I went off to my own room, and so to bed
with an incredibly light heart. I had still enough of the honest
man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to
dread their performance, to deplore their necessity: which is
merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an
incomparably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked.
    I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of
dismissing unpleasant considerations, not intimately connected
with the passing moment, entirely from my mind. Through the
exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous
life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from
it the year before; and similarly, here at Milchester, in the
long-dreaded cricket-week, I had after all a quite excellent
time.
    It is true that there were other factors in this pleasing
disappointment. In the first place, mirabile dictu, there were
one or two even greater duffers than I on the Abbey
cricket-field. Indeed, quite early in the week, when it was of
most value to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky catch;
a ball, of which I had merely heard the hum, stuck fast in my
hand, which Lord Amersteth himself grasped in public
congratulation. This happy accident was not to be undone even by
me, and, as nothing succeeds like success, and the constant
encouragement of the one great cricketer on the field was in
itself an immense stimulus, I actually made a run or two in my
very next innings. Miss Melhuish said pretty things to me that
night at the great ball in honor of Viscount Crowley's majority;
she also told me that was the night on which the robbers would
assuredly make their raid, and was full of arch tremors when we
sat out in the garden, though the entire premises were
illuminated all night long. Meanwhile the quiet Scotchman took
countless photographs by day, which he developed by night in a
dark room admirably situated in the servants' part of the house;
and it is my firm belief that only two of his fellow-guests knew
Mr. Clephane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard.
    The week was to end with a trumpery match on the Saturday, which
two or three of us intended abandoning early in order to return
to town that night. The match, however, was never played. In
the small hours of the Saturday morning a tragedy took place at
Milchester Abbey.
    Let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it. My room opened
upon the central gallery, and was not even on the same floor as
that on which Raffles—and I think all the other men—were
quartered. I had been put, in fact, into the dressing-room of
one of the grand suites, and my too near neighbors were old Lady
Melrose and my host and hostess. Now, by the Friday evening the
actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first time that
week, I must have been sound asleep since midnight, when all at
once I found myself sitting up breathless. A heavy thud had come
against my door, and now I heard hard breathing and the dull
stamp of muffled feet.
    "I've got ye," muttered a voice. "It's no use struggling."
    It was the Scotch detective, and a new fear turned me cold.
There was no reply, but the hard breathing grew harder still, and
the muffled feet beat the floor to a quicker measure. In sudden
panic I sprang out of bed and flung open my door. A light burnt
low on the landing, and by it I could see Mackenzie swaying